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The Error Content
These scenarios have the advantage of explaining why there are many errors in the cosmology of the Papers. Mainly, they would have come about from the questions posed by the Forum that they believed "no human being could answer." Many such questions would have required the revelators to provide unearned knowledge--knowledge that they were proscribed from giving. (1109) So, to avoid the whole project falling apart, the revelators appear to have given answers from the forefront of knowledge of that time, full knowing that much of it would later prove to be erroneous.
[Note: The Book's error content has been markedly expanded recently because of new, highly accurate methods of dating rock strata using zircon crystals. About thirty of these errors will be listed in the next issue of Innerface.]
However, testing for fraud may have been confined to the early period following establishment of the Forum. After receiving the initial group of Papers, Dr Sadler reported receiving a message from the revelators suggesting that "since we could now ask many and more intelligent questions…(they would) enlarge the revelation…in accordance with our new questions"--the implication being that their earlier questions were not all that brilliant.
Many of the Papers of Parts 1-3 are not only of extraordinary quality but are also of enormous value for fostering the future spiritual growth of Urantians. It is possible that such material was a result of exceptionally high quality questioning from the Forum. The revelators, recognizing the future value to us mortals, then decided to try and find a way by which they could be published either alone or in conjunction with Part 4.
Such a decision immediately brought to the fore the problem of the error content already introduced into the cosmology as a result of the Forum members' attempts to gain proof for the revelators' credentials. The revelators had not expected that this material would be published. But now they had to get rid of it. Or find a way to divert attention elsewhere. Their best hope may be that future scholarly analysis would recognize the transient nature of cosmological truth--hence concentrate attention to those revelatory elements having truth value essential for renewing our spiritual advancement.
But would Urantians understand that universe rules and policies ensured that no revelation can ever be infallible? Or would they take the easy way out and imitate Christian and Islamic fundamentalists, an attitude that could be sustained for a few years only, but must eventually become untenable as more and more error became exposed? One way to ensure that fundamentalism could not for long be sustained would be to include material that is simply and obviously ridiculous--a status that much of the erroneous material has now attained.
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